Reflections: The Right To Hurt
by Silent Hero
Summary: Scott reflects on Jean and her final gift ot him. OneShot, Cyclops POV, set after X2. 2nd in a series. Please R&R!


Reflections: The Right to Hurt

2nd in a series

By Silent Hero

One-Shot, Cyclops POV Set post-X2

StatusComplete

PG For breif mild language

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I had a dream last night. I was fighting. A sentinel. I don't know where I was or why, or even who I was with. It was just me and something I had to hurt. I was blasting away at it like my life depended on blowing it into two-inch fragments. Blasting away with these damned red eyes. Every time, I saw a line form between my eyes and the sentinel. A red, fiery line that leaves smoke and destruction behind everything it touches. Fire... It consumes everything I touch. It always has.

Nobody knows, you see. Nobody even suspects that the untouchable Cyclops _feels. _ And not like a mutant: Like a human. Like a real, normal human, I feel. Or more correctly, I hurt. For the longest time, I though I didn't have the right to hurt. Because after all, every mutant out there is waiting to spill his sob story out to anyone who will listen, each one distinctly more pathetic than the last. And the pain is there... Pain more than what I'm feeling. And the sad thing? No-one cares.

Of course, there are those select few, like the Professor, and Storm, and once, a red-headed woman I loved with all my heart. Somehow, they manage to care for and about everyone and everything around them. I've tried to be like them, in a lot of ways. I don't think I did a very good job of it, because it was mostly me trying to ignore the mess I was inside and focus on helping everyone else patch up their own problems. A lot of the time, I did help. I was able to touch someone, to help someone avoid what I'm doing to myself.

But I still can't help but wonder... When will this ridiculous farce bring me down? It's like cheating. Sooner or later, you have to get caught. It's inevitable. Someday, the thread will break—It's all a matter of how hard it hits me. Because it _is_ going to hit me, just like the sun's going to come up tomorrow. It's going to destroy me, and maybe I won't survive... And why doesn't that thought scare me? Not the thought that I might die of course—I've never been afraid of dying—but the fact that now, I almost want it. I want to know what it's like—to sink into blackness and never have to come back up for something as trivial as breathing.

See what a mess I am right now? I can't even get my thoughts in order. One thing leads to another, and I don't quite finish saying what I want to say before I'm off babbling about something else.

Let the X-Men see their Fearless Leader now. The stoical, organized, mathematical one. The cool, collected one. No emotion, maybe no feeling. Now, he's sitting out here under a tree talking to himself.

Only to himself.

Because no-one else is here, right? You're not here.

Why man has to take a cold, dead piece of stone and use it to mark a life is beyond me. Here in this beautiful garden, a tombstone is pretty out of place, isn't it? The woman I loved hated cemetaries and gravestones; hated thinking about all the pain and suffering around them. You would hate this one, too, I think. Because it isn't you. It isn't anything like you.

You loved me. God, I want to believe you loved me. I know you loved me. But now, something inside of me screams doubt and worry at everything I know to be true. You chose me. God, I wanted to kill Logan for making me doubt you. How did he come between us?

I know what you'd say... He never came between us. He came between me and something I was sure of and I hated him for that. I could feel you. I knew how you felt and I loved being sure of that. But I also knew how he felt, and that always made me worry that I wasn't enough for you. I'm boring right? If there's anything deeper to Scott Summers, it isn't anything people want to see. Except you... Somehow you didn't mind all the pain and heartsickness and fear that I thought would drive you away. You wanted to help me. You wanted to love me.

You know, I hated the color red before I met you. I hated every damned thing about it, not that red is really all that many things _but_ red. I hated it because I wanted color back so much it hurt. But then of course, you told me what color you hair was. I was surprised. I had just assumed it was light brown, or dark blonde or something. I was entranced, because to me, it was symbolic. Because I knew that I could look at you—look at a color that was you, and know I wasn't just seeing it tinted some shade of red. I was seeing it red: and it really was red. It was the same way with you. That's how I know now, for sure, you chose me without even thinking about Logan. I could always see you just how you were. I could always know just how you feeling, because you never pretended for me. You never tried to be or do or show something you weren't.

You were Jean Grey. Someday, you might have been Jean Grey-Summers. Someday, I might have married you.

I was _going_ to marry you.

Remember the ring? The silver one, with two diamonds and a ruby in it? Remember it? That ruby, the one right in the middle, was really red. It was just like your hair, a color I could see and be sure of. It was on your hand when you died. But were you thinking of that ring? Maybe you were. Maybe that's why you did what you did.

I can cry, you know. Well, of course _you _know, but most people don't. The think I can't cry because of my optic blasts. They assume the tears just kind of get zapped out of my eyes before they can fall, and I let them assume it. It really goes with the whole Fearless Leader image, don't you think?

But I cry. You broke me, Jean. You know how many years it had been since I'd cried? I was keeping track. I was seeing how long before the string broke. It took fifteen years for something to rip those tears out of me. Fifteen long, miserable years of stuffing hurt inside of me like packing trash into a dumpster. That can go on quite a while, you know.

Hmm. Fifteen years. That's gotta be some kind of record.

I'm accepting this, you know. Or at least, trying. I refuse to give in to all the 'it isn't fair; why did this happen to me?' crap. I hear that a lot of the time from the students, but that's to be expected. They're just kids, after all. You know what I mean. But from me that would be hypocrisy. I've learned that life isn't fair and I've learned that if it can happen to me, it will. So why ask questions you know won't get answered? So I'm not going to say it isn't fair and I'm not gioing to question fate.

But I am going to sit here for a while. I'm going to sit on this stupid bench that's probably been here since before I was born and will be here long after I die, and I'm going to hurt. I'm going to sit where we shared out first kiss and saw our first shooting star, where you told me your hair was red and I told you I was colorblind. I'm going to sit where I asked you to make me the happiest I've ever been in my life, and I'm going to hurt. Because right now, I don't think I'm good for too much else.

I'm going to sit here forever... that is, until five-thirty. Then I've got to get back to the mansion and help make dinner. I've got to start construction on the parts of the mansion Stryker destroyed. I have to grade papers and run diagnostics on the new Danger Room programs, do laundry and have a pep-talk with Bobby about freezing the floors in the girls dormitory. I'm going to go back to life like I actually think it's possible to do just that, and pretend I don't want to throw-up when I catch a sudden memory. I'll do everything I usually do and more now, and pretend I don't hear the students' whispers wondering if cold, emotionless Mr. Summers even cares that she's gone.

But for right now, I'm just going to sit here. I'm going to sit here and stare at the gravestone you'd hate and wish I could see something really, truly red. I'm going to wonder when the string will break and if I have the right to lead this team. I'm going to think about crying, and about ruby engagment rings, and seeing things in red and those damned fiery blasts that are powerful enough to kill, but not powerful enough to save a life. I'm going to think about anything and everything and nothing at all.

I'm going to sit here because I loved you, Jean Grey. Because I was going to marry you, and make a family with you, and go to the ends of the earth to make you happy. I'm going to sit here and think about you and wonder what life would have been like with you. I'm going to sit here... and hurt.

You gave me that right, and I'll always thank you for that.

I loved you, Jean Grey."

_finis_

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Please R&R!


End file.
